Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
Summer 2009 Graduate Courses
Contact: mcc.graduate@nyu.edu or 212.998.5130
E58.2166 The Global City and Media Ethnography
May 18 – June 5
4:55 - 7:40 pm
Professor: Allen Feldman
The course focuses on the theories and methods of media/sensory ethnography, visual culture,
media archeology, through the linked topics of transcultural and trans-local processes, diaspora
identities, the post colonial and human rights. The curriculum is aimed at graduate and senior
undergraduate students from diverse disciplines who want to explore creative media practice as
a research methodology for their respective thesis projects and other research.
This course provides students with theoretical and practical grounding in multi-sited action
research in trans-cultural and transnational settings. Through social historical and trans-cultural
ethnographic perspectives practice-led pedagogy promotes a self-reflexive contextual and critical
understanding of the use of media for the conduct and dissemination of research and the creation
of social knowledge through participatory cultural production. Practice-led research overcomes
divisions between social theory and action-research, and between creative practice and
evidence-based research. There will be a strong emphasis on comprehending visual phenomena
in cross-cultural perspective and the creation of social knowledge through participatory cultural
production. [4 credits]